Ah. don’t recall reading that we get all of them.
You straight up explain our criticism regarding Destro right after telling us we are all giving “nonsense criticism”
Yes the tree idea and theme sounds good, and its amazing for Demo. But it is indeed a terrible design for Destro, as you explained yourself. Keep in mind that mechanically speaking is what I’m talking about it, not thematically.
Quick note, they havn’t said anything but so far the moond and feedback they gave around Warriors indicate that they want to move talents impacted by hero talents in accessible positions on the tree (no indication about making some baseline or not, we don’t know that yet)
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So basically, in open world content you will probably never get to use this as destruction. After spending the first soul shard, it is 20 seconds before the proc activates, reduced by 1 second per shard spent. Am I missing anything?
I’d just like to point out that green fire is available for every spec but that it simply does more visually for destruction simply because it has more fire. However, it does affect every spec and I wouldn’t say that the “destruction’s thing” is green fire.
As for summoning a demon as destruction, this hero tree does kind of borrow the Ritual of Ruin mechanic where you summon a demon if you spend enough shards. In mythic plus and AoE, I get to summon a Blasphemy for free all the time. There’s also Rain of Chaos that allows us to summon more Infernals during our Infernal cooldown. Summoning demons simply by spending soul shards on other spells is a common mechanic for destruction.
But yes, this hero class does seem more focused on demonology. Given the name, I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t say that all destruction warlocks are being merged into demonology though. After all, the other hero class involving destruction is called Hellcaller. That seems more destruction focused than affliction I would say. And affliction has one called Soul Harvester with demonology that definitely sounds like it would be leaning more towards affliction.
We will have to wait and see of course, but destruction is more than just green fire and green fire isn’t just a destruction thing.
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Yeah they mentioned I believe either Blizzcon or the following up interview, we will get every node by max level (we complete the whole tree) so really the only decision to be making is what choice nodes you’d prefer.
We’ve noticed some points that could benefit from additional clarification.
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Demonfire Barrage will cast Incinerate for Destruction rather than Shadow Bolt. This is missing from our blog post and will be added.
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Diabolic Ritual will be tuned on a per specialization basis. This means that final numbers may be different for each specialization to achieve a similar cadence between the two, however, the overall mechanic will remain the same.
Thank you for the thoughts and discussion so far!
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Thank you for the clarifications, much needed.
First thing first does Demonfire barrage generate shards?
Secondly, when we say tuned differently, it means Destruction will speed up the ritual WAY faster per shard than Demo?
One concern with Demonfire barrage for example; Shadow Bolts for Demo generate 4 soul shards that can immediately be used on the next ritual. For Destro, 4 incinerates would be great damage if impacted by talents, but it would generate what… a shard at best maybe?
Thats a good start, other part of the trees have issues but I’ll deep dive on those later.
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Thanks for the clarifications Kaivax.
Would it be possible for some additional clarification in regards to Ruination as well? would it be the same spell for both specs or just like Demonfire Barrage it will be a Destro and Demo version who do different things?
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I feel there may be problems trying to balance the cadence for Destro in particular. People have pointed out that Demo spends shards way faster than Destro, and that’s true… in ST. In AoE, Demo’s shard expenditure stays the same, and Destro’s goes through the roof. It was seen with Destro’s Shadowlands S3 tier set how absolutely insane Destro’s shard expenditure gets in AoE. Obviously the damage of the demons can be balanced between Demo and Destro, but what about balancing it between Destro ST and Destro AoE? I suppose there are other tuning nobs for Destro’s AoE, but then that will become potentially problematic for Hellcaller Destruction. Obviously everything is still in flux and we haven’t even seen Hellcaller (or Soul Harvester), but I still feel it’s worth bearing in mind as things go forward.
At any rate, really appreciate the communication. There are 2 big things I’d like clarified at this point.
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Does Demonfire Barrage generate shards? I assume it will generate at least as many shards as the normal Shadow Bolt/Incinerate that it’s replacing. But will it generate 4 Shadow Bolts/Incinerates worth of shards if fully channeled?
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Can we get more information on Ruination? As it stands right now, it sounds like it’s just a hard hitting HoG for Demo, and an AoE Chaos Bolt for Destro. Is that all it is? In general, does it follow the same rules (cast time, damage, shard cost, auto-crit?) for both specs? I’ve been speculating that it might be shard-free, but that’s just speculation. Any clarifications you can give us would be greatly appreciated
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With the clarifications in mind, which alleviates some concerns; here are a few points I’d like to bring up;
Gloom of Nathreza
Having to use Havoc for ST is not a fun idea. I dont know about a good alternative but its not on par at all with its Demo counterpart
Ruination
Would it be possible to have something more thematic for Destro vs Demo? Wild Imps for Demo is great, but for Destro how about something different? Some fel beasts that breath fire or something?
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Great to hear. I think things are good thematically, so as long as the dev team is willing to balance things per spec to make sure it maths out somewhat evenly for both specs, I think it’s mostly good overall.
That alleviates some of the concerns and sounds like a number of the problems could be resolved by tweaking some numbers.
Thanks for the clarification. It will be interesting to see how the Diabolic Ritual cadence works for Destro when shifting from Chaos Bolt to Rain of Fire as well.
Demonfire Barrage sounds cool and it would be nice to know if Shard generation is attached to the extra bolts or if this is just additional damage.
Would be cool if Ruination summoned more imps than usual, or a special demon on top of the 3 imps. Could be an infernal for both specs, since the spell does Chaos damage?
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Honestly been playing since before launch and this is one of those make it or break it points for lock again since Blizz loves to ruin locks.
As many classes warlock have goten overly complicated to “properly play” not as bad a some. But Blizz has lost sight of the focus needs to land on players skill to avoid and play fight mechanics in a raid or pvp not typing in and keeping track of advanced theroetical physics. Its why Classic, Wrath, and SoD have drawn so many from live. Times when it was more about the mechanics vs whos getting carpel tunnel. That draws away from the fights and fun. In a more streamlimd moba age of MMOs. Many were excited when Blizz anounced massive pruning and streamlined play that may or maynot happen vs adding more and more excesive garbage.
That said this new new for expac is exciting has a lot of us pumped reminds me of when there was discussions of hero classes and evolution back pre-wrath that ended up spawning deathknights off pally and demonhunter off rogue. My only hesitancy is potentially making lock more complicated, reducing the fun factor and raid potential. Right now breaking meta and going off stat weights appears to give more maximizing dps against even robot predictions. Farmers got it down though 
cranking millions in oddball gear and stats. Needs to be fixed before expac. That and pleas god no crazy shards again.
Would also ask Blizz heavily consider the warlock tanks from SoD for live for expac, with more modern models though and ability to show some armor pieces like dragon classes. But was first good step blizzards made in decades.
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I was thinking more adorable mini-infernals for destruction.
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If Classic takes so much skill, why do almost all of the raid bosses die in 60 seconds or less? It’s an absolute fact that the first few expansions of the game were easy mode and most of the difficulty was just that people didn’t understand the game mechanics well enough.
As far as adding complexity to the rotation of warlocks, this hero class is pretty much entirely passive. It doesn’t add any new active abilities or spells, it simply augments current ones.
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My initial reaction as a Demonology Warlock, this looks great!
However, I’m a little worried that NP has been included as, personally, I think Blizz should draw a line under NP and remove it from WoW. I mean, yeah, it’s a cool talent, but it’s either ridiculously overpowered or too underwhelming to be worth playing (not to mention is highly counterintuitive with the Demo play-style/rotation).
Basically, I’d think they’d be better off having one side of the talent tree for empowered demons and the other for multiple demons.
Would also like to know what the Overlord and Mother of Chaos look like and how they attack (melee or range, single or cleave?).
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I think maybe your brain selectively blocked Yogg 0 and HLK. Although alot of Classic and BC bosses were just gear slogs(or did you forget to bring enough dwarf priests, f that Neltharion guy).
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And I’d be down with that!
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I see many people have already brought up the Cataclysm vs Inferno issue. I’ll just add that, for pvp, it will feel extra bad needing to take Cataclysm with the current DF talent tree layout. It will require a 3 talent point investment with 2 of them being largely useless (Rain of Fire, Pyrogenics).
I’m really not a fan of tier sets “forcing” certain playstyles / talent choices. I’m disappointed to see that this design is continuing in TWW. In my opinion these new hero talents should only enhance your core rotational abilities that you always have. Ideally with procs that make rotations more dynamic / reactive and spice them up. A lot of the hero talent trees shown so far just have a bunch of passive modifiers (warlock is actually one of the best ones shown so far, though). Passive modifiers are boring design and won’t feel like anything actually changes.
My biggest suggestion would be to move away from the design of forcing certain ability choices and do better at designing and balancing the talent trees (for all specs, not just warlock). Make more stuff baseline so it doesn’t feel like we are gimping ourselves so bad in ST or AOE when focusing on one (really bad problem for Affliction).
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